I've discovered a new appreciation for DePalma this year too, so this is great news. Did you check out the Blow Out Criterion? It's gorgeous and includes his first film, Murder a la Mod.

Grabbed it day of release. It's amazing how the stars aligned to bring about a movie such as Blow Out (Landing Travolta and George Litto becoming the head of the studio to boost the budget). I doubt they'd get away with the Liberty Parade celebration on that scale. De Palma needs to be represented better in HD, one of the first blu's I bought was The Untouchables and I wasn't even conscious of my De Palma appreciation (I've since looked back on my moviegoing as a youth and it's miraculous how many De Palma movies I was taken to.)

I'm hoping Criterion licenses Phantom of the Paradise next, the scans of that French release are spectacular and more coverage of De Palma's career would be excellent. I like the Noah Baumbach interview but some of the questions he asked were kind of odd (Is Travolta's recording changing like the Conversation?). If they got Tarantino to sit down with him and cover the span of his carer I'd buy two and gift one.

In other news, bought the Spider-Man boxset from a clearance sale new for $25 which is a great price for 2.25 good movies. I didn't realize they took out all the bonus features from the first two. Admittedly the first one was mainly focused on the history and reverence of the character but 2 has the excellent multi-part making of.

There's ~5-7 minutes difference (counting only the unrated cut, not the 85-min R abortion), some of which is listed here. Supposedly Jackson's said he prefers the US 97-minute cut (so, yeah, doubtful I'll get my wish), but I just can't agree. Not much gore is lost, but so many character notes and simply funny lines or takes go out the window. Scenes and transitions are better set up, etc. Not to mention the subtle political and racial subtext is lost almost entirely. Then there's just fantastic gags, like Lionel saved by the baby's umbilical cord getting caught on a nail, which always gets a great reaction. I had Braindead on tape for almost a decade, and only got the unrated Dead Alive on DVD last year, and even after prepping myself I was dumbfounded by the difference 7 minutes makes. I'm sure it's a matter of being so used to one before seeing the other, but man the rhythm felt completely off.

There's a used DVD and game shop in my neck of the woods called CEX. I think it's a chain. The prices are low, but they rarely have great stuff on Blu. Mostly just tons of copies of some random titles they got at price (Redbelt, Dogma, The Day After Tomorrow, etc.), but sometimes there's a fucking deal and a half.

Today, the complete Godfather series on Blu for 15 dollars. I think someone made a mistake. I don't think I could get that on DVD for less than 40.

Ended up ordering (in two separate orders) nine Blu-rays and one DVD: Beauty and the Beast, Videodrome, The Great Dictator, Diabolique, Mystery Train, Red Desert, Crumb, Walkabout, Solaris, and Burden of Dreams (the sole DVD). Almost pulled the trigger on the Mishima DVD, but then thought, Y'know, if they announce the Blu-ray on this three months from now I'm gonna feel like a berk. Burden of Dreams at least will look good next to my Anchor Bay Herzog sets. Aside from being awesome, of course.

I could only pull the trigger on Seven Samurai. My Blu Ray wallet is still aching from LOTR. I'm already kicking myself for not getting Chungking Express. Mostly just to have it on my shelf and impress people.

Yikes. That is bad. You'd think Raising Arizona and Fargo would have enough clout on their own to garner some attention on a shelf. That packaging makes it seem as if they're almost embarrassed by the titles of the movies included in the pack.

Dunno how I feel about the packaging of the Coen box set. Nice concept, but it looks slapped together in Photoshop in five minutes, to use a cliche.

For about a half a second, I thought I was staring at the Being John Malkovich DVD insert.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Justin Clark

About damn time: The Crow. October 18th. Same day as Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown. All the 2 Disc supplements made it over. And it's budget priced ($13.99).

What would make that Crow release even more awesome would be if they could somehow go back in time about 10 years, and undo all the political bullshit that buried the original Alex Proyas commentary track and feature-length documentary.

Then again, if you could go back in time 10 years, there'd probably be a couple other things you'd want to undo first in the world before that.

What would make that Crow release even more awesome would be if they could somehow go back in time about 10 years, and undo all the political bullshit that buried the original Alex Proyas commentary track and feature-length documentary.

Care to enlighten those of us that aren't familiar with this? Or point us to a resource? Sounds interesting.

The nutshell version is that Proyas had not only recorded commentary, but he had a 90 minute doc commissioned with all sorts of interviews and behind the scenes footage. A lot of stuff from the deleted Skull Cowboy scenes is supposedly in there. Problem is, for some reason or another, Proyas decided not to include Jeff Most (the producer) in any of the supplements. When Most bitched to the Weinsteins, threatening to walk on what was gonna be another godawful Crow sequel, Harvey scrapped Proyas' stuff altogether. So, we're left with what's on the 2-Disc now.

It's a Mark Rance/Three-Legged Cat effort we'll never get to experience, sadly.

Yet no director's cut. I would have liked some of those scenes to make it back in. I know they cut some violence and the whole skull cowboy part out. One of the skull cowboy scenes are on youtuve somewhere and it actually makes more sense than "we shoot his crow and take his power" thing.

I've read Demolition Man, Assassins, and The Specialist all have really excellent video and audio quality.

For a low budget movie, Super looks amazing. All the stubble on Frank's chin, and threads on his costume are crystal clear. There's also alot of little drawings throughout that really benefit from the HD.

So, is the new Star Wars bluray set going to contain the original theatrical cuts of IV-VI or the ridiculous 1997 re-releases? I can't find any confirmation of the cuts but all of the comments from Amazon make it look its the crappy CGI-fests.

I did just pick up a magically inexpensive Alien Box Set, and I think the original Alien is the best looking Blu Ray I've ever seen. That is a stunning piece of tech, and certainly my go to demo disc at this point (although really, I don't think I've been called on to demo anything in a long ass time). It looks like it was shot this year, which is so disconcerting with super young Sigourney Weaver in it. By contrast, Aliens looks all right, but it didn't blow my mind or anything.

I'm not sure it was related to this, but I also discovered that Alien is far and away the better movie. Like, not even close. That's a big change from when I was a teenager.

I did just pick up a magically inexpensive Alien Box Set, and I think the original Alien is the best looking Blu Ray I've ever seen. That is a stunning piece of tech, and certainly my go to demo disc at this point (although really, I don't think I've been called on to demo anything in a long ass time). It looks like it was shot this year, which is so disconcerting with super young Sigourney Weaver in it. By contrast, Aliens looks all right, but it didn't blow my mind or anything.

I don't know I felt like the Aliens was a pretty impressive remaster especially when you consider what they were working with. The fact that he was able to take that much grain out of that crappy film stock but still not make it look like shitty and glossy full of smoothed out details is pretty great.

Okay, I'll stop but why are you (and others) beating yourself up about this? This is going to be a pretty sweet set and it'll look great on whatever HDTV you own. The 40 hours of extras alone have me salivating along with the thought of seeing six of my favorite movies in HD!

Yeah, those will be day one purchases for me. I'll even be able to treat Kingdom of the Crystal Skull as an extra.

Special Features, especially commentary tracks, are becoming less and less viable for me. 40 hours of Star Wars making of videos feels like the biggest homework assignment ever. There's so many other movies I've never seen before that I could spend my increasingly limited free time on.

More inclined to pick up Indy just because Star Wars is just so dead to me. The is no good in Lucas any more. I swear what goodness that was left jumped out and turned into Quentin Tarantino. Maybe a small piece of his soul is James Cameron.

I'm not sure it was related to this, but I also discovered that Alien is far and away the better movie. Like, not even close. That's a big change from when I was a teenager.

They are two completely different films. Two completely different genres, and IMO, it's stupid to compare them. Some cunt on another website wrote an Alien vs Aliens article that was laughably bad. I love both films, and love the fact that Cameron decided to do something "different". Look at the sequels produced in the 80s, everything was a carbon copy of the original.

I will admit though, growing up, I never really liked Alien. I appreciated the film, but I found it boring. Now that I'm not 12 anymore, I can see it for the masterpiece it really is. It had no business being as good as it turned out. But somehow, Fox and Ridley were able to take a script, that had elements of sexuality, and mix it with a designer (Giger), who's work is completely sexual. It was a perfect marriage. That, IMO, made the film.

Guess whats getting a double dip? Evil Dead 2. Actually im happy about this one to be honest. The current edition has a shit transfer and word is this one is going to be fixed. If that turns out to be true im in.